Vladimir Putin’s plans to spend more money on rearmament is “a squandering of valuable natural and labor resources, Mikhail Bobryshevsays. But more than it, “an arms race led to the collapse of the USSR and the same thing will happen with Russia if it doesn’t stop and reflect about this.”

As in Soviet times, the country has been subjected to Western sanctions, but Moscow is compounding the problems they create by entering into an arms race, something it is even less well equipped to pursue than was the USSR, according to Mikhail Bobryshev, a Moscow specialist in international trade.

Bobryshev is only one of many Russian writers now given to drawing parallels with the late Soviet Union and Putin’s Russia today. Another is Aleksandr Khots who points out that it was the cold war, including the arms race, which “buried the USSR, a country which couldn’t withstand competition with the West.”

President Ronald Reagan giving a speech on Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Nov-18-1981 (Image: reaganlibrary.archives.gov)

Khots says that Putin has sparked a confrontation with the West copying “Soviet models” because he sees in “neo-Sovietism” a way of giving meaning to his domestic and foreign policy. For a long time, the West refused to recognize that reality, but now Putin’s “dream” of returning to the past has “achieved.” The consequences, however, are not ones he’ll welcome.

Putin’s pursuit of confrontation “cannot end other than as a new ideological war,” one that it would be hard for “the rational West” to begin but “now will be complicated to stop.” As many don’t remember, Brezhnev began with the pursuit of détente but ended by invading Afghanistan – and sparking the final phase of the cold war.

“It is striking,” Khots says, “to what degree the Putin ‘elite’ is repeating the path of Soviet diplomacy,” moving “from being a member of the G8 to that of international outcast, from trade links with the West to complete isolation.” Today’s Putin’s Russia is where Brezhnev’s Soviet Union was when Ronald Reagan gave his “evil empire” speech.

Leonid Brezhnev

That Soviet-provoked view led to the end of the Soviet Union, and its current analogue can have the same effect on Russia. “However, all this is hardly a basis for pessimism. Rather the reverse.” The Cold War ended the USSR but gave Russia a chance to start anew, something many Russians want even if Putin doesn’t.

Putin’s readiness to begin a new arms race, one that he can’t win and that his “imperial and ineffective regime” won’t survive. Thus, “paradoxically … a new cold war is a historic chance for a new Russia to return to the historical arena,” albeit via a path that will be filled with “hurt, collapse and chaos.”

Moreover, the Moscow analyst says, the more Putin strives to enter into an arms race with the West, the more destructive that will be for the Russian economy and “the greater the window of opportunities which will open for us into the civilized world.”

Dostoyevsky once wrote in his Diary of a Writer that “war is not always evil; sometimes, it is a salvation.” Today is “a rare case” when a new Cold War will allow one to agree with the nineteenth century classic.

White House to demand from Russia to close its Consulate General in U.S. diplomatic hostilities between Washington and Moscow continue

veth

After Putlers regime is gone, the Russians will choose a new fascist leader……………..

Dagwood Bumstead

Pedo Putolini is a welterweight boxer trying to compete in the heavyweight class. Dwarfstan simply doesn’t have the resources, especially financial, to enable him to realise his ambition of recreating his beloved USSR. Not one FSU country will voluntarily merge with Dwarfstan, not even Belarus- Dwarfstan has nothing positive to offer. This leaves only violence to achieve his aims and the Donbas shows how successful that is……… NOT!
Dwarfstan will break up, just like the USSR. There won’t be one leader but several, plus the loss of territory to China and Japan at the very least. Peking wants the territories back that Aleksandr II stole in 1856-60. And Tokyo wants the Kuriles and Sakhalin back. The dwarf won’t be able to stop Peking short of a nuclear war. Not a good idea when China also has nukes.
Kadyrov will create his Caliphate consisting of Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia (or at the very least try to). Other regions may well decide to say “Drop dead!” to Moscow as well.

The only question is how big Muscovy will be when it’s all over- or rather, how small.

Look at Brezhnev! Where do they find these clowns? Yeltsin was useless, Putin is a tu rd, it seems the main qualification to be a RuSSian politician is to be a piece of second rate human garbage.

zorbatheturk

Brezhnev looks like a pure piece of human garbage.

Dagwood Bumstead

Brezhnev actually had some intelligence. If I’m not mistaken he had a degree in metallurgy, which is more than the dwarf has. He was ga-ga towards the end of his life, though. Invading Afghanistan was probably his greatest mistake.
The dwarf did not learn anything from Brezhnev’s mistakes whatsoever and is repeating them with his invasions of Georgia, the Crimea and Donbas and his war in Syria.

About the Source

Paul Goble is a longtime specialist on ethnic and religious questions in Eurasia. He has served as director of research and publications at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy, vice dean for the social sciences and humanities at Audentes University in Tallinn, and a senior research associate at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia. Earlier he has served in various capacities in the U.S. State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency and the International Broadcasting Bureau as well as at the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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